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Event Description

Join us for an evening all about the artist. This program will serve as a stop on Sharon Louden's 94-stop conversation tour for her book, The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life. Panelists include artist, advocate, and editor herself, Sharon Louden; editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, Hrag Vartanian; and Miami's very own artists Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova and Michelle Weinberg.

The panel will discuss how artists sustain their lifestyle while also generously supporting other artists. Copies of The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life and Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Essays by 40 Working Artists will be on sale and available for signing in the auditorium immediately following the discussion.

She graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Drawing Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Weisman Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Louden's work is held in major public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Arkansas Arts Center, Yale University Art Gallery, Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. Sharon Louden has taught for more than 25 years since graduating from Yale University School of Art in 1991.

Sharon is a full-time practicing, professional artist who lives and works in Queens, NY. For more information on Sharon's work, visit her website at www.sharonlouden.com.

Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova was born in 1973 in Havana, Cuba and currently lives and works in Miami, FL. He is currently one of the directors of Dimensions Variable (DV), an artist-run project space in Miami.

His work is included in public and private collections in Miami, nationally and internationally. Rodriguez-Casanova's projects have been written about in The New York Times, ARTnews, Art in America, Art Nexus, Sculpture Magazine, The Miami Rail, Temporary Art Review, ArtSlant, Aesthetica Magazine, The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, PBS News Hour and The Miami New Times.

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, a publication he created in 2009 in response to the changes in the art world, publishing, and the distribution of information. Breaking news, award-winning reporting, informed opinions, and quality conversations about art have helped Hyperallergic reach over 1 million readers a month. Hrag launched the Hyperallergic podcast in 2016 which travels around the globe to uncover the evolving world of art.

In addition, he has curated projects, exhibitions and has organized public events since 1997. Highlights of his curatorial efforts include exhibitions at BAM, Storefront Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and #theSocialGraph at Outpost, the world's first multi-disciplinary exhibition of social media-related art in 2010. He has visited many universities and colleges as a visiting critic including RISD, Brooklyn College, UC Davis, Pratt, Columbia and UNLV, as well as moderated panel discussions and juried exhibitions for various organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Chautauqua Institution.

Beyond his writing, he is an avid photographer and collector of photographs. He is committed to serious, playful, and radical storytelling that pushes the boundaries of writing.

Michelle Weinberg is a painter who creates art for surfaces, interiors, architecture, and public spaces. She received her BFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC and her MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. She is the recipient of awards, fellowships and residencies including a Creative Learning Grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, a South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship in Visual & Media Art, an Individual Artist Fellowship and Artist Enhancement Grant from the State of Florida, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, residencies at MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, homesession and Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain, and Altos de Chavon in the Dominican Republic.

Exhibitions of her work include: FIU Frost Art Museum, the Wolfsonian Museum, design sublime and Emerson Dorsch Gallery in Miami, Cyan Gallery in Barcelona, Curatorial + Co in Sydney, ARENA and The Hewitt Gallery at Marymount Manhattan College in NYC, The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Edison State College in Fort Myers, FL, The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA and Islip Art Museum, NY. Commissions include murals for Young at Art Museum, The Wolfsonian Museum-FIU and Facebook offices in Miami, public art projects for Miami-Dade County, City of Tampa, City of Pembroke Pines, Cultural Council of Jacksonville, and City of Hollywood, all in FL.

Weinberg is Creative Director of Girls' Club in Fort Lauderdale, and a consultant to museums and non-profits, developing exhibitions, education programming and more. www.michelleweinberg.com